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Opinions wanted: is there any point to Windows 8?

Had to run Win8 enough for testing purposes. Once MS got around to actually using the product internally and applying the necessary fixes, it wasn't that bad. Certainly, never was the curate's egg of Win 10 updates. It does seem that no one in MS management has bothered to use the new Windows versions since it only takes minutes to find issues that made the product a massive step back in usability.
 
krebizfan said:
It does seem that no one in MS management has bothered to use the new Windows versions since it only takes minutes to find issues that made the product a massive step back in usability.
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That would make for an interesting development cycle: M$ develops new OS. Before it is released, upper management and the development team are required to use it as their daily-driver for ~6-12 months, being allowed to make changes as needed. Only then is it released to the public.

I often feel that if decision-makers were made to use their own products, those products would be better.
 
I remember going over to my MicroCenter with a certificate or something and received a free copy of W8. The 'Aero' gimmick comes to mind. As a gamer it was so-so. Still have it in its original box.
 
It's a question of perspective. There probably was some point in MS releasing it. No point in buying it though.
 
On the plus side, Windows 8 was the first version of Windows which included USB 3 support. Not a reason to upgrade to Windows 8 and then stick there, but a possible reason to upgrade at least past that.
 
Eh, USB 3.0 is not that great.

I do recall when Windows Vista first came out and M$ was desperate to get people to install an obvious turd, one tactic they used was to strongarm game developers into dropping XP support for upcoming titles, allowing them to be advertised as "vista exclusive". I don't recall if they tried that again for later windows versions though.
 
Seems nobody likes Windows 8 much. As I said earlier I never got the chance to find out.

If MS had been a bit more sensible about what to support, they could have had the computing world in their hands, relegating the opposition to irrelevance. But due to greed and stupidity, they've let it slip away. Even now there's countries where the major OS is not Windows 10 or 11, it's XP - and they seem to be getting on just fine.
 
gslick said:
On the plus side, Windows 8 was the first version of Windows which included USB 3 support. Not a reason to upgrade to Windows 8 and then stick there, but a possible reason to upgrade at least past that.
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Windows 8 may have had built in USB 3 support, but it was not the first version of Windows to support USB 3. Windows 7 had plenty of USB 3.0 controller drivers. There were even some that went as far back as Windows XP.

hunterjwizzard said:
Eh, USB 3.0 is not that great.
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USB 3 was a desperately needed technology at the time it came out. Internal buses had far outpaced the speed and capabilities of any consumer external bus. USB 2.0 was painfully slow for storage devices, limiting you to 60 MB/s or less.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
limiting you to 60 MB/s or less.
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Thats typically what I get on USB 3.0 if trying to move a file more than a few hundred megs. Real improvement there.

Robbbert said:
Even now there's countries where the major OS is not Windows 10 or 11, it's XP - and they seem to be getting on just fine.
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XP is still the best windows version ever. If I could just have XP forever I'd be happy.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
XP is still the best windows version ever. If I could just have XP forever I'd be happy.
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I thought that for the time, WIndows 2000 was substantially better than earlier NT versions. (3.1, 3.5, 3.5.1, 4...). Can't say that I ever had much trouble with it--and at the time, I was still writing drivers for NT.
 
I would rather have Win2k forever with updates. Win2k was the last OS I jumped into, even using betas till it was released. I migrated to XP when SP2 came around and then Win7 when I needed x64 and more RAM.

MS doesn't make game developers switch OS support, they just make new versions of DirectX for new OS's only and eventually you need to upgrade to play. Or worse when the OS is unsupported anymore you can't get by with old browsers (which makes me wonder how people still use XP).

USB 3 is speedy as long as the drives you are getting files from and to can keep up.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Don't buy crappy flash drives that overheat and throttle their performance.
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True, and I believe the Samsung 970/980/990 series are the Hallmark based on many benchmarks and excellent service history. I currently use the 990 4TB on my big machine.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
That was on a high-end external hard drive with active cooling.
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Is it a shingled drive inside the enclosure? Sustained write speeds of 60MB/s don't seem too out of spec for shingled drives. Still would be more than double what USB 2 drives would provide.

I don't like USB 3's desire to cover all possible use cases with visually identical ports and cables. If a port or cable is stuck at a slow data rate or minimal power transfer, the entire connection is limited to that.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
That was on a high-end external hard drive with active cooling.
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I would check if the drive enclosure actually supports USB 3. If it does, I would then check if the cable and connectors are working properly. If the cable is damaged internally or the connectors don't make 100% connection, the drive can drop down to USB 2 mode.

If you're trying to use a USB 2 drive on USB 3, you won't get any faster speeds.
 
Since the introduction of the standard I've owned about three dozen USB 3.0 devices ranging from inexpensive to top of the line. I suppose its possible all 36 of them were broken.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
Since the introduction of the standard I've owned about three dozen USB 3.0 devices ranging from inexpensive to top of the line. I suppose its possible all 36 of them were broken.
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Did you also have multiple controllers? USB 3 involves such a complex set of negotiations that some pairings will fail. I have a number of fast devices on USB 3 so I do know that it can work.
 
About 12 different controllers across various machines, some onboard some peripheral cards. I have now and always have had a lot of different computers around.
 
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